Canzano: Oregon football program and coach Chip Kelly take a step toward trust

The Associated PressOregon coach Chip Kelly discusses the punishment of LaMichael James and Jeremiah Masoli during a press conference Friday afternoon at the Casanova Center.

In the end, for the University of Oregon football program it wasn't so much about a couple of stolen laptops, or even a trip downtown in the back of a police cruiser.

It was about lies.

More on that in a bit.

First, though, Ducks quarterback Jeremiah Masoli pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary in a Lane County courtroom on Friday. And running back LaMichael James pleaded guilty to physical harassment.

The starting backfield performed in the court system as we've always seen them on the field -- with Masoli plowing smack into his conviction like it was standing in the way of a first-down marker and James shedding more serious charges and dancing past jailers in an overcrowded legal system.

Both men got probation. Both put an end to the speculation about their current legal issues. And before the day ended, coach Chip Kelly suspended James for one game next season, and Masoli, his prized field general, for the entire 2010 season.

According to police records Masoli told an investigator that he was not in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house the night it was burglarized. Also the quarterback fed Kelly the same lie. In the end, it was the betrayal of Kelly's trust as much as the crime, or embarrassment of arrest, that cost Masoli most.

There is no lying in football, kid.

Anyone who talked to Kelly in recent days could feel this coming for Masoli. The Ducks coach took a harder line after he realized he had been misled by one of the players he had so adamantly protected throughout the past few weeks. I suppose having your game-day decision-maker light his own pants on fire would bring you to that point.

Friday morning, Kelly said: "If I can't trust a player on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, how can I trust him in front of 100,000 people at Tennessee?

"You can't be a selective participant."

Hours later, Kelly made his public statement suspending the players, pausing just before dropping the news about Masoli's season-long suspension. It was as if there was no going back. And there isn't this time.

Because as much as I want to trust Kelly, even as I think he played Friday exactly right when it comes to punishment of his players, it's going to take some time to believe in the program again.

A few weeks without an incident? A couple of months? A season or two? I think we'd settle for what we can get right now, but the point is, as much as it's about trust for Kelly, it's about trust for the rest of us now, too.

Any first-grade teacher will tell you the key to discipline is consistency.

I worried about Kelly's program after his suspension, then subsequent reinstatement, of LeGarrette Blount last season.

He said he felt like he was doing the right thing when he announced Blount, "would never play football at Oregon again," and felt like he was doing the right thing when he sent him back into a game later the same season.

Kelly struggled mightily with that. He defiantly announced a couple of weeks ago that he wouldn't suspend James pending the outcome of the investigation. "I don't have all the facts," he said. Then, a day later, Kelly privately suspended the running back from all activities but told nobody else.

He also announced on ESPN's Outside the Lines and a local radio station that he would come back on the air and collect apologies from people who questioned whether James deserved a suspension, pending the outcome of the investigation. As if James were an innocent, framed by the accuser.

On Friday, James took responsibility for his crime. He accepted the punishment. He apologized to the victim. He got publicly suspended by his coach. But Kelly was a no-show outside of his brief statement.

"I don't want people to think I'm dodging this by not coming on the air," he said. "But I want it to be over. We'll all learn from this lesson. I believe we live in a fish bowl and there's nothing you can do about that. If you can't handle that, then you can't play here.

"If you do the right things, you don't have to worry about it."

He has it nailed cold now.

I don't know if Kelly finally had enough nonsense, or if being lied to by Masoli was just too much, or if his mind opened after talking with Oregon State coach Mike Riley this week, but there's something more focused about Kelly right now.

The Oregon program has embarrassed itself. Its players are a reflection of the coach, the university, and the football operation. Repairing that image won't be limited to bowl appearances and high fives. If the cluster of nefarious activity continues there will have to be broader changes.

Kelly's the guy in charge, so ultimately it's his neck left sticking out.

I want to trust Kelly. I want to believe that the UO football program is going to be best known for football soon. It feels as though trust is at the center of everything now.

Kelly feels evolved, too. As if the movement forward on Friday didn't belong so much to the two guys who were being pushed through the courtrooms as it did the disappointed coach waiting for them outside the doors.